2022 Thread 1: Swann's Way/ (The Way by Swann's) : Combray/Overture

[Traveller]

Hello everyone, thread for our first discussion of 2022, the first section of Combray. (Or Overture in some editions)

We can start discussing our editions and translations and so on, right away here, but the actual bigger discussion of the text will only start on Fri Jan 7, although in the first few days we will cover the first 10-11 pages of what in some editions will be "Combray" and in other editions: "Overture".
The reason for this is to be as inclusive as possible - we're giving people a bit of time to make sure that everyone is ready to start, has obtained their preferred editions, and so forth.

This opening section is pretty dense, so don't worry, we should still have quite enough to discuss, since Proust packed a lot of his famous ideas into the beginning part already.

So discussion of the actual text that will start on January 3, will only cover the small section which starts with :

For a long time I would go to bed early. Sometimes, the candle barely out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have time to tell myself: “I’m falling asleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to look for sleep would awaken me; I would make as if to put away the book which I imagined was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had gone on thinking, while I was asleep,

and ends with :

"And as soon as the dinner-bell rang I would hurry down to the dining-room, where the big hanging lamp, ignorant of Golo and Bluebeard but well acquainted with my family and the dish of stewed beef, shed the same light as on every other evening; and I would fall into the arms of my mother, whom the misfortunes of Geneviève de Brabant had made all the dearer to me, just as the crimes of Golo had driven me to a more than ordinarily scrupulous examination of my own conscience."

The next section to be discussed will be delineated on Friday. We're sort of starting in the middle of the week, so we have to adapt the usual rythm a bit.

[Laura]

Following.

[Cordelia]

I think you mean Fri 7 Jan, dont you?

[Traveller]

Cordelia wrote: "I think you mean Fri 7 Jan, dont you?"

Yup moderating too many groups/threads at once can get your head spinning! Thanks for the heads-up!

[Traveller]

I do apologize, Proustians, but I've been doing a bit more planning, and I see now that trying to be too mechanical in how we approach this might not be the best option.

I've now for example noticed that there's a natural break after the first 65 pages of Combray. Also, our group read is sort of beginning in the middle of the week due to how the dates fall for the year.

So I'm thinking that perhaps we should discuss those 10 or 11 pages I mentioned above, as well as just make our greetings and comment on the editions/translations we're reading, as we hit the ground between the 3rd and the 7th. Then, the 7th, we'll add on those remaining 55 odd pages that takes us to the end of section I of Combray, but those of you who want to start discussing it this weekend already because you're rearing to go, we can maybe start doing that this weekend already.

I'll post a detailed schedule for the reading of the "Combray" section in the scheduling thread.

[Traveller]

Ok, timing schedule for Swann's Way done.

Please find the schedule here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Traveller]

Hi all, today is the big day that we're opening this thread for discussion. It would be nice if can start with the first few pages, just so that everyone has a chance to get into step with one another.

For your benefit, I will now and then copy and paste background notes from my Norton Critical Editions which contains notes and commentary, and for the comfort of those not interested in these notes, I will put them under spoiler tags, like so:

NOTE ON BACKGROUND: Who Proust was: (view spoiler)[ Proust was born July 10, 1871, in the immediate aftermath of the Paris Commune, the son of a respected Catholic doctor and a Jewish mother from a wealthy family. (My commentary: So Proust, via his family, was wealthy enough not to have to work - he could enjoy a society life, and take to bed in comfort when his health failed him)

At the time of his birth, his mother was very unwell and Proust himself was so sick and frail that he was not expected to survive. He remained a delicate child, suffering his first asthma attack at the age of ten; by the time he was thirty-eight, breathing problems had more or less confined him to his bed. His brother Robert was born two years after him.

Though Proust was baptized, he neither practiced Catholicism nor identified with his mother’s matrilineal (Jewish) religion. Indeed, if he is well known as a Jewish writer, it is because of a political act rather than a religious one. In the 1890s, when a French Jewish army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongly convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment, Proust added his voice to the officer’s defense. The Dreyfus Affair, which galvanized French anti-Semitism and divided the country (it culminated in a 1905 law separating church from state), exposed Proust to criticisms both from aristocratic defenders of the army and from his own Catholic father.

Marcel Proust was an outsider in various ways: Jewish, homosexual, and asthmatic; brilliant, sensitive, perspicacious, witty, and obsessive. More later. :) (hide spoiler)]

So if you're completely new to Proust, please click on the spoiler tag above, to read a bit of background about him. The spoiler tag is simply to reduce clutter.

Please remember not to panic if your specific translation starts with "Overture". Some editions make that distinction, and others don't, but you must start at the beginning of Overture if you have one, and if you don't, then simply start at the beginning of Combray.

So the Moncrieff starts at: For a long time I would go to bed early.
French version starts at : Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.

A little introduction on the work, some of it borrowed from here and there:

Swann’s Way is the first volume of Proust's seven-volume novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (Literally: 'In search of lost time') . The 3,000 to 4,000 page novel (depending on the edition) was first translated into English as 'Remembrance of Things Past', and sometimes referred to in French as La Recherche (The Search). This gargantuan early 20th-century work is Proust's most prominent work, known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory and the perception of time.

The title of Volume 1, Swann's Way, published in 1913, (The title of the translation by Davis is ' The Way by Swann's') refers to the path that the narrator used to follow on outings with his family.

When at their country house at Combray (a fictionalized version of Proust’s actual hometown of Illiers), the family would take long walks, setting out in one of two directions. One was called the Méséglise way, or “Swann’s Way,” because it passed by the estate of their friend Charles Swann. The other was called the Guermantes way, leading past the estate of the Guermantes family.

Here is an online version of the copy I’ve been using to delineate our sections according to page numbers. It’s the Moncrieff, Kilmartin and Enright edition, arguably the best translation into English of the work. Not sure if GR will allow the link - let's see: https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads...

For a discussion of the pro’s and cons of the various translations please see here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I will wait for you guys to post some initial impressions and comments before adding more to the discussion. Please start commenting right away on the first little section, but not too far in please, so that we can first make sure that everyone is on board.

As requested above, please only comment for these first few days up to the section that stops just before you get to: After dinner, alas, I soon had to leave Mama, who stayed there talking with the others, in the garden if the weather was fine, in the little drawing room to which everyone withdrew if the weather was bad.

[Traveller]

Oh! And I forgot to mention a few things to first time readers: Combray is the most poetic and philosophical part of the novel, where the author introduces his concepts of how memories form and are recalled, and our perceptions of time, which is not chronological, but rather based on specific "prompts" or stimilu.

These very first pages are also reflections upon how imagination and dreaming works - he makes observations, in other words, on human consciousness by demonstrating various forms and states of consciousness to us in these very first few pages.

I absolutely adore this first part but if this is not your beef, if you feel that it seems rather weird to you - do not panic!

Things start to become more and more like a conventional novel as you go along, and by the time you reach Swann in Love, it's completely conventional. So, please tell us if you don't like this first part, but don't be shy to say so - many people find Combray boring and this first part weird.

[Nidhi]

I like the first part, not only in Proust, in all other works of literature. Actually as I read I am getting awareness about my taste for literature, I prefer this memory forming and recall process which was till now hard to put in words.

[Traveller]

Glad to hear you're liking it so far, Nidhi!

[Traveller]

Nobody else? Ok, let me make a few comments:

As we start off reading, we are immediately introduced to the narrator's disjunctive thoughts and varied states of consciousness as he drifts in and out of sleep after falling asleep whilst reading. Various thoughts and images drift through his mind, some of them suggested by his reading matter, which causes a metacognitive and a metafictive moment, where he feels as if he himself is becoming the material that he is reading.

In fact there's a lot packed right into the very first paragraph of Combray, some of it quite philosophical. ...for do we not, after all, become a part of what we are reading, and it becomes a part of us?
...but the narrator's comments also shows an immense reflexivity, a focus on the self and it's surroundings, but not as it exists in actual fact, but rather as it exists in the observer's mind, which many would say, are sort of reflections in epistemology (philosophy of knowledge): Does reality exist outside of ourselves, or is each one of us's reality what is constructed by our own minds? The way I am reading Proust here, I would say leans towards the latter, and in doing so, he is both echoing some philosophers and foreshadowing a lot of what current cognitive science (science of how the brain works and executes thoughts and calculations) has discovered about how our brains perceive reality.

This first paragraph also mentions the narrator's reading matter, which tells us a few things about him: He was well-read even at an early age, is French/interested in French history and politics, (the rivalry between François I and Charles V), is interested in music (the quartet) and the Church features in his life in some way.

Furthermore, the initial parts of Combray, especially this introductory part, is written in the 'stream-of-consciousness' style that would become so characteristic of modernist literature. And of course, timewise, Proust is situated at the very front of the modernist movement.

I'm lazily quoting from Encylopedia Britannica:

Modernism, in the fine arts, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I.

In an era characterized by industrialization, the nearly global adoption of capitalism, rapid social change, and advances in science and the social sciences (e.g., Freudian theory), Modernists felt a growing alienation incompatible with Victorian morality, optimism, and convention. New ideas in psychology, philosophy, and political theory kindled a search for new modes of expression.

,

and to quote The Cambridge Companion to European Novelists ,

À la recherche serves as a bridge between the nascent forms of modernism found in the work of predecessors such as Gustave Flaubert and Charles Baudelaire and the high modernism that was to challenge traditional genre conventions in the period between the two world wars. Though anchored in the nineteenth century, Proust is also a contemporary of Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso, a writer whose thinking was indelibly shaped by the artistic and technological revolutions of modernity and who, in turn, contributed to the new understanding of the world and the self that emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century.

[Nidhi]

That is very well said that what you read becomes part of your self. This part of description of various places of sleep ( bed rooms), all the nocturnal sounds and the light admitting itself from the chinks , the position of various door knobs.... all this led me to introspection of various bedrooms in various states of the country. We never think that much but they are actually part of our sub conscious mind and this is one of the many reasons which produces affinity towards a particular place and distaste towards another.

[Laura]

I'm hoping to participate too but sometimes fall behind in keeping up with group threads etc.
I'm reading the red Spine Vintage edition which is Moncrieff/Kilmartin ed. Enright.

I'm loving it so far. I find it very relatable and am enjoying the flow.

[Traveller]

Laura wrote: "I'm hoping to participate too but sometimes fall behind in keeping up with group threads etc.
I'm reading the red Spine Vintage edition which is Moncrieff/Kilmartin ed. Enright.

I'm loving it so f..."

Good to hear, Laura, yes, Combray has some lovely passages. Also, you have my favorite translation there, so I'm glad to hear about that as well. :)

I think we should feel ourselves free to comment up to the end of the first more or less 65 pages in this thread, and then we can comment on the whole story with his mother and going to bed without her, a bit later on in this thread. So for now, we go to the end of the little story containing Geneviève de Brabant and Golo, and just before the bit where it mentions : But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet.
Don't worry about spoilers, because we'll be making separate threads for each little section.

I'm starting to realize that it might be impossible to have everyone comment at the same time and read at a similar pace, so I might have to set up a few threads in advance so that people can comment at their own pace. Hopefully the people who are ahead, will come back and chat with the people who are behind. If nobody else does, I will still reply to any comments even if you are behind, so do your share your impressions, that's what a group discussion is all about!

I myself will also comment more on the text a bit later on.

[Traveller]

Nidhi wrote: "That is very well said that what you read becomes part of your self. This part of description of various places of sleep ( bed rooms), all the nocturnal sounds and the light admitting itself from t..."

Thanks for your thoughts and comments, Nhidi! This introspective first part of the novel does cause one to think and reflect about things, doesn't it?

[Cordelia]

I love this first little bit. I love the modernist style - one of my favourite periods and styles of literature.

I'm listening to the audio. The Moncrief translation. Read by Neville Jason. It is lovely.

[Ellen]

Although I never feel I have much to add to these discussions, I wanted to participate as I am reading the book. I get swept into the long winding sentences. I am surprised to see by my highlights that I have reread at least part of the book recently which may explain why I remember it so well!

I especially love the magic lantern.

[Traveller]

Hi Ellie and Cordelia, thanks for sharing! These are indeed long winding sentences, written in modernist style, which prompts me to want to repeat a bit of what I had said in the 2021 thread about the very first passages that we didn't get around to discussing yet.

On the very first few pages, where Proust plays with the concepts of space and time, where he seems to be finding himself floating in limbo between sleep, “the soft darkness” and wakefulness or reason, in that inbetween land where we dwell upon our thoughts and let them wander – he seems to resist himself slipping into the embrace of the soft darkness by trying to orient himself with regard to time; “I wondered what time it was” , and immediately after that, he tries to orient himself with regard to space as well, where he tries to orient himself with regard to the landscape around him with the whistling of the trains, which he whimsically compares to songs of birds in the forest.

And then comes the bit that pretty much encapsulates the novel: the passenger hurrying to return after the excitement of the unknown. Besides that this is obviously a foreshadowing of the narrator’s own journey, his bid to "return home" with the writing of the novel, as well as the narrator's bid to return home as well by dwelling on his memories, it touches on the classical idea of the monomyth or "the heroe's journey."

You might have heard of Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung's analytical psychology. Campbell used the monomyth to deconstruct and compare religions in his famous book The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949).

Since I’m lazy, I’ll quote from Wikipedia: “In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.”

Ok, so this is a trope in literary theory, but, if you think about it, most stories, if you break them down to the bare bones, are about some kind of journey (physical or psychological) that changes something or someone in the story – hence, a story, and not just a random glob of text. I really like that Proust just casually and quite poetically just throws that out there. A rather more obscure example of metatextuality.

[Traveller]

Oh, and besides his play on time, space and consciousness, Proust also plays with the idea of identity, anybody else notice that?

[Traveller]

Ok, I'm, sure everyone must be into reading by now, so if there's no more interest in these first pages, let's move on to where we can discuss some more 'human' aspects of the story, starting with the section; (on my p12 of the Enright, but it might be different for everyone else):

But after dinner, alas, I was soon obliged to leave Mamma, who stayed talking with the others, in the garden if it was fine, or in the little parlour where everyone took shelter when it was wet. Everyone, except my grandmother, who felt that “it’s a pity to shut oneself indoors in the country” and who had endless arguments with my father on days when it rained too heavily, because he sent me to read in my room instead of having me stay outdoors. “That’s no way to make him strong and active,” she would say sadly, “especially that boy, who so needs to build up his endurance and willpower.”

and we'll end the thread with:

And as in the game wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, solid and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea. (Enright p.64)

Ok, folks, time to tell one another what we think of the narrator as a young boy's agony in going to bed without his mother. Do you think it tells us something about the boy, his parents, his culture, the times they lived in, or all of the above?

[Dianne]

I love this first part! I find myself rereading sentences again and again, which can make it slow going but also very worthwhile. How did the author's life play into his initial thoughts in this work? The extreme level of detail and introspection leads one to believe that perhaps he was housebound, and thus prone to the overly analytical opening? Why is our narrator so starved for attention? Also, was he sickly, an invalid? It seemed to me that the narrator's only source of affection was his mother, and perhaps his only close human interaction, and so he was desperate for attention and did not have other outlets or opportunities that other youth his age may have had.

[Ellen]

My biggest problem is how slowly I'm reading. I love it and savor it but worry about "keeping up" with the schedule!

[Traveller]

Dianne wrote: "I love this first part! I find myself rereading sentences again and again, which can make it slow going but also very worthwhile. How did the author's life play into his initial thoughts in this wo..."

Wow, I think that is one of the best and most nuanced explanations that I've seen for the narrator's behaviour and state of mind, Dianne! Thanks for those insights.

And indeed, even though À La Recherche is not a biography, it does indeed seem to represent a lot of the author's points of view and experiences, and of course, we know that the author was a sickly person, suffering from asthma. One seems to glean that the narrator was also a lonely boy, and also, as if his family, especially the one grandma, believed in being "tough", a lot like the British 'stiff upper lip' of the time.

Ellie wrote: "My biggest problem is how slowly I'm reading. I love it and savor it but worry about "keeping up" with the schedule!"

Don't worry, Ellie! I'll be making new threads for every portion, so you can still read and comment on every thread without fear of spoilers by checking where the thread ends in my prompt at the top of the thread.

Each thread will cover roughly 75 pages of my Enright, the whole of which is 580 pages long.
So we'll be covering roughly 240 pages per month, (that's not so bad, eh?) and once we get to Swann in Love, it goes a lot faster, because then it becomes more dialogue, like a conventional novel.

So do take your time and savor the beautiful descriptions and scenery in Combray while it lasts. :)

[Nidhi]

I can very well understand the child weeping when his desire is fulfilled... he is overwhelmed.

I loved the Madeleine scene and two more excerpts which I will post at the expiration of this duration (13 January)

I have moved to the next section which I am enjoying very much.

[Traveller]

In this section, we meet both Swann the elder and Swann the younger.

Proust is obviously taking the opportunity to comment on the class system, and I must say I applaud the opinion of Mlle Céline in that regard.

…but in any case, the narrator deftly sketches his own family’s position on the social ladder vs that of Swann. Did anybody else also find how the great-aunts treat Swann amusing?

Also interesting and insightful comments on how a social persona is constructed in the human psyche. Isn’t it true that all of us see ‘false' images of those around us, even, in most cases, of those we love.

Note: Marquise de Sévigné (5 February 1626 – 17 April 1696), was a French aristocrat, remembered for her letter-writing. Most of her letters, celebrated for their wit and vividness, were addressed to her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné. She is revered in France as one of the great icons of French 17th-century literature.

Nidhi wrote: "I loved the Madeleine scene and two more excerpts which I will post at the expiration of this duration (13 January)

I have moved to the next section which I am enjoying very much."

Nhidi, you are quite welcome to comment on the Madeleine scene in this thread, and then I have made a thread for Combray II that starts just a bit after that, here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Manny]

I have been developing new methods for creating multimodal LARA texts out of public domain audiobooks, and used them to create a much improved LARA version of Combray with the audio taken from the Monique Vincens version on litteratureaudio. She's good! Details at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...